BillyClark@piefed.social 1 week ago
This episode lacked the punch I was expecting. I think partially because they’re forced to rush through the story, and partially just some bad storytelling choices.
We’re told a couple of things about Veronica, but not in a way that sinks in. If they don’t show us clearly how Veronica is different from other nobles, and specifically in how she treats different people differently, the story is going to lose a lot of its emotional bite. She was cruel to Ferdinand, and we only get like one sentence about that so far.
We don’t really understand what it means if Wilfried fails at his winter debut, as we’ve never seen a winter debut, and I don’t think we’re even specifically told how much time he has. We don’t understand the extent of Wilfried’s running away at a basic level. It must be extreme if he’s not even learned his letters, but if you tell the audience that he’s been receiving private tutoring for a long time and he’s still at exactly zero, it’s just so absurd that there’s no way for us to comprehend.
We’re told that Wilfried’s attendants aren’t raising him properly, but we’re not really shown it. The only time we’ve been shown Wilfried running away was a long time ago in the episode about Rozemyne’s baptism, and it’s not clear that this is what Wilfried does all day, every day.
Instead, we’re given a sort of heartwarming scene at the end where Wilfried and his attendant… was that Oswald?… nod at each other like everything is better. No, everything has not been fixed. Wilfried’s attendants are utter failures at their primary job.
By the end of the episode, you know that this is a critical event for the future of the duchy, an event where the fate of the next archduke is in the balance. I mean, what happens if a complete failure becomes archduke? What happens if Wilfried is disinherited? Would he be sent to the temple as a blue priest? I had hoped this episode would have a similar amount of impact as the harspiel concert episode.
devaly@ani.social 1 week ago
I’m not gonna lie… It feels very contradictory that failing the winter debut is so fucking important, and his tutors just let it happen.
They could potentially be executed for their failures, due to the high importance of it to the nobility and succession. How did they not bring this to the boy’s father?
BillyClark@piefed.social 1 week ago
That’s a great point. When Myne was attacked by the trombe as a blue shrine maiden, Damuel was almost executed simply because he didn’t signal for help when a higher ranked noble attacked Myne. So Damuel’s inaction due to his incompetence just with regard to following Ferdinand’s order was enough to be executed. Of course, he was a laynoble, so far less important.
I expect that even though Wilfried’s attendants are archnobles, this is a far more serious crime. But maybe on the balance, because they’re archnobles, they think they might not be executed because their mana is needed?
This next paragraph may have spoilers. It’s all stuff that’s already happened in the anime, but maybe wasn’t explained fully in the anime, I can’t remember, so I’ll mark it as spoilers. For example, did Florencia specifically say in this episode who was raising Wilfried before? I can’t remember. I do think most of it is stuff that you could assume from the anime, even if it wasn’t explained.
Some things already shown in the anime, but with maybe extra info from the LNs
Previous to this arc, Wilfried’s upbringing was left to Veronica, and that was only about half a year before this episode. I don’t know that Wilfried’s attendants could go against Veronica. It may be that they simply believed Wilfried was doomed to fail his winter debut, but since Veronica seemed to think it was okay, it was going to be okay even without her. And they may have thought 9 months wasn’t enough to fix what Veronica had broken, so maybe they’d get out of the situation by blaming her.